Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [337]
“What’s the job?” I asked. I didn’t sound happy, but I asked.
Bert was all smiles. Sometimes I suspected that he’d been behind that en masse meeting, but Manny and Charles swore up and down he hadn’t been. Jamison I wouldn’t have believed either way, so I didn’t ask.
“The Browns’ son died about three years ago. They want you to raise him and ask some questions.”
My eyes were unfriendly slits. “Tell me all of it, Bert, so far I wouldn’t have turned it down.”
He cleared his throat and fidgeted. Bert didn’t fidget much. “Well, the son was murdered.”
I threw my hands into the air. “Damn it, Bert, I can’t raise a murder victim. None of us here can. I gave you a list that you were supposed to refuse for all of us, for legal reasons, and that was one of them.”
“You used to do it.”
“Yeah, before I found out what happens when you raise a murder vic as a zombie, and that was before the new laws went into effect. A murdered person rises from the grave and goes after their murderer, no ifs, ands, or buts. They will tear through anyone and anything that tries to stop them. I had it happen twice, Bert. The zombies don’t answer questions about who killed them, they just go rampaging off and try to find who did it.”
“Couldn’t the police just follow them, sort of like they do bloodhounds?”
“These bloodhounds will tear people’s arms off and crash through houses. Zombie’s do a very straight line to their murderers. And the way the law reads now, the animator that raised the zombie would be liable for all the damage, including the deaths. If one of us raised this boy and he killed anyone, even his own murderer, we’d be charged with murder. Murder with magical malfeasance. That’s an automatic death sentence. So no, I can’t do it, and neither can anybody else.”
He looked sad, probably about the money. “I told them you’d explain it to them.”
“You should have explained it to them yourself, Bert. I’ve told you all this before.”
“They asked me if I was an animator, when I said no, they wouldn’t believe me. They said if they could just meet with Ms. Blake, they’re sure they could change your mind.”
“Jesus, Bert, this is really unfair. It can’t be done, and watching their son rise from the grave as a shambling murderous zombie is not going to help them heal.”
He raised eyebrows at that. “Well, I can’t say I put it as well as you just did, but I swear to you that I did tell them no.”
“But I’m meeting with them anyway, because they offered fifteen grand for an hour of my time.”
“I could have gotten them to twenty grand. They’re desperate. I could smell it on them. If we turn them down flat, they’re going to try to find someone less reputable, less legal.”
I closed my eyes and let the air out in a long slow sigh. I hated that he was right, but he was. When people get to a certain level of desperation, they’ll do stupid things. Stupid, foolish, horrible things. We were the only animating firm in the Midwest. There was one in New Orleans and one in California, but they wouldn’t take this job for the same reason we wouldn’t. The new laws. I could say it was to save the clients pain, but in all honesty the idea that you could raise a murder victim from the grave and just ask them who killed them was so tempting that several of us had tried to do it. We’d thought it hadn’t worked because of the trauma of the murder, or that the animators doing it weren’t powerful enough, but that wasn’t it. If you were murdered, you rose with only one thought in your dead brain: revenge. Until you got that revenge, you wouldn’t listen to anyone’s orders, not even the animator